Jazz Articles

Marc Copland: Gary

by Dan McClenaghan
February 20, 2019

Pianist Marc Copland is the perfect interpreter of the music of bassist Gary Peacock. The artists' musical relationship began over three decades ago, and continues to this day. Peacock, best known perhaps for his long tenure in pianist Keith Jarrett's “Standards Trio," has played on numerous Copland recordings, including At Night (Sunnyside, 1992), Softly (Savoy Jazz, 1997), two out of the three of Copland's profile-boosting “New York Trio Recordings" on Pirouet Records, Modina ( 2006) and Voices (2007), and when ...

Marc Ducret: Le sens de la marche

by Jean-Marc Gelin
August 21, 2009

From the word go, guitarist Marc Ducret's Le sens de la marche enters another world, an unsettled one full of surprise and anguish--one for which there can be no preparation. Vaguely reminiscent of Frank Zappa, King Crimson and Tim Berne, it's a musical hubbub of organized chaos--systematic in theory but brutal and brilliant in practice.

The references, however, are many and various. Ducret's jungle is wild and urbane; on “Tapage," the distant echoes of Duke Ellington's jungle can be heard, ...

Marc Ducret: Le Sens De La Marche

by Martin Longley
June 3, 2009

Marc Ducret is usually experienced either as a highly noticeable sideman or, if he's leading his own band, a dangerously pointed guitar brandisher. Mostly, he's known for working with Tim Berne, as part of Bloodcount and Big Satan. This solo album reveals one of Ducret's other aspects: composer and bandleader on a particularly ambitious scale. His 10-piece ensemble sounds even bigger than that, benefiting from strategic electrification and amplification. The material was recorded in Ducret's French homeland, ...

Bill Carrothers: Civil War Diaries: Solo Piano

by John Kelman
November 1, 2005

If pianist Bill Carrothers hadn't found his way to music, he might have been a historian. Fortunately, Carrothers has found a unique way to combine both interests. Armistice 1918 (Sketch, 2004) was a remarkably broad-scoped concept piece that brought together his own thought-provoking compositions with imaginative reworkings of popular songs from the First World War. But that wasn't the first time Carrothers mined archival wartime music. The Blues and the Greys (Bridgeboy, 1997), the first release under his own name, ...